The article linked below begins with a token gesture of admiration for Obama's promised American Policy to "start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating.” Then we hear how this new policy will apply to all nations, be they China or Iran, to everyone-except poor old Israel because Obama targets them exclusively and unfairly, by asking nicely for a total freeze to settlements. Riddle me this. When was the last time Cuba expanded it's territory by stealing land in order to ethnically cleanse itself of a population deemed by it's racist policy as "Untouchables"? Shocking that Israel is being victimized (yet again) among all nations of the world! Appalling!
Since Obama is/was asking for a complete halt to settlements, no exceptions, no excuses, not even for natural growth, the author of this article is concerned. Here is the argument:
No “natural growth” means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining. It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them -- not even within the existing town boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that. The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns - even before negotiations. Source, scroll down to article titled, "The Settlement Myths", emphasis mine.
Well, some solutions that have worked in the past by Israel might solve the real problems:
- You can let the overgrowth spill over into tent communities and you can even protect these communities by placing fences around them. It worked for Palestinians who were chased out of their own homes due to "unnatural" overgrowth and who now live in refugee camps. Whats good for the goose.......
- You can use the Jerusalem model and have your illegal settlers pitch tents outside of their former "homes" in protest, while Palestinians move back in to their rightful land with armed guards protecting them round the clock, from the terrorist settlers.
- You can insist that illegal settlers be deported back to their original homeland since they all have one, unlike the people whose land these illegals are destroying. And then fully eliminate that right of of future return. It works, I tell you!
- If that fails or doesn't go down well, you can rely on the World Bank model that was used to buy off settlers when they were evicted from Gaza. That will shut people up, it always does.
- Then there is the Japanese model. Small island. Population growth. Overcrowding. Hmm.....Maybe it's time to launch a campaign to curb that worrying prospect of natural growth to manageable levels?
- Build up on legitimate land, like most overcrowded cities in developed nations do to accommodate overgrowth, natural or unnatural, rather than building out in order to steal what is not yours.
I'm convinced that all of the above measures are long overdue. Israel, you have a problem. In fact, you are the problem. No amount of whining and lies will ever erase that fact.
But the author is right about one thing. No community can survive like that. Except for the Palestinian community which is surviving exactly as the author claims the halting of settlements would create for the illegal tenants that reside in Palestine. Palestinians are surviving even if they are not supposed to actually survive at all.
